ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI
Regina King's Feature Film Directorial Debut
Regina King, the actor known for her roles in projects such as If Beale Street Could Talk and Watchmen, has now made her feature film directorial debut with One Night in Miami. The movie tells a fictional account of legends Muhammed Ali (Eli Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) meeting in a Miami hotel room to discuss the civil rights movement and cultural revolution of the 1960s. Kemp Powers wrote the script for the film based on his stage play of the same name.
While the meeting of the four men, who were friends in real life, depicted in the film is fictional, the night on which the story is set, February 25, 1964, does hold significance. On that night, Ali, who was still going by his birth name, Cassius Clay, defeated fellow boxer Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, Florida, and became the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
One Night in Miami had its world premiere on September 7, 2020, at the Venice Film Festival. It marked the first time the Venice Film Festival selected a film directed by an African-American woman. It went on to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was the first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award (the award went to Nomadland). In July, Amazon Studios acquired the film’s distribution rights. One Night in Miami will have a limited theatrical release on December 25, followed by a January 15, 2021 release on Amazon Prime. The film currently holds a 97% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
We are certainly looking forward to seeing One Night in Miami. And, given the high praise King has been getting for her direction, we are excited to see what she directs next.
